Splish! Splash! (Approximate onomatopoeia of my cellphone receiving a text.)

bo u in palmy? dis tawhai.

Yeah. What?

There is something wrong with this picture.

That doesn’t seem like much of a discount.

I was wandering through The Warehouse earlier this year, looking to kick off my DVD collection, and I saw the Cool Runnings DVD. Cool Runnings!, I thought. Jamaica has a bobsled team! I loved that movie in primary school. Buy buy buy! And I did.

Since then it has helped provide sufficient mass to call my DVDs a collection. The other day I had a crazy thought. Not to watch it – maybe later. But to check if my DVD player is all-region, as this one is region 2. So I put it in.

And no matter what scene I picked, or how much I fast-forwarded, it just showed some random reggae music videos. Maybe, I thought desperately, maybe they’re singing that Jamaica has a bobsled team.

Yeah, nah. There’s a word for people like me.

I’d be a rich man mother fucker

So this one is hilarious. A senator in the US, who for some insane reason is in charge of internet legislation, including the recent (and scary) net neutrality issue, explains for us how the internet works. Basically, it is a series of tubes. Extract:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Apparently it was being held up behind all the other Stuff on the internet. The tubes were flooded… anyway, I don’t want to dazzle you with the technical details. We’ll leave that to The Daily Show.

• YouTube – The Daily Show: Ted Stevens and the Internet
• YouTube – The Daily Show: Rips Republicans on America Values
• YouTube – The Daily Show: Net Neutrality With John Hodgman (To fully enjoy this one, you may need to have a quick glance at the Get a Mac TV Ads)

Don’t worry, though – the Senator has a letter from a big scientist confirming his theory.

I was checking out the line-up of shitty TV when this caught my eye, evoking memories of V for Vendetta:

Not nearly as good a name as “Hour of Power.”

I was also reminded of a shot I had got a few months ago of a tempting Google Ad:

I didn’t click it or anything, though. I mean, it’s an ad. No one clicks those, right?

They don’t click mine, anyway.

So I was looking for pictures of Hermione (I wonder if the equivalent counter exists?) indulging my Harry Potter addiction (cf. Harry Potter Reading Plan) actually I can’t remember why I was there, which is how it generally goes on the internet I suppose. But I was reading the Wikipedia article for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when I saw this message:

You’ve got mail!

This was kind of freaky, because I don’t edit Wikipedia or anything. Who was fucking messaging me, man?

I did what to The Man?

So… maybe it was someone else? My mind flashed back to that one time I was really drunk (ie. the previous day), and did I go to Wikipedia when I got home? Um. Shit. You’d think you would remember doing that, right? Utilising my extreme Wikipedia skillz, I did that diff thing you can do:

She has the power.

Yeah. I would definitely have remembered doing that.

Good work, though. Go the Livejournal crowd! Or is it the MySpace crowd now? I saw something worrying on C4, our music channel, earlier – something called The MySpace Song. I didn’t actually see it, it was just scrolling along the bottom. I don’t think I want to see it.

And in Trademe news: will swap for dictionary. Oh and, Crazy Apple Rumors Site reveals the name of Microsoft’s upcoming iPod Killer.

Hardly a rarity, but I have here for you varied tales of incompetence. They hurt us so, and all we can do is laugh.

Anil Dash, blogging on Vox, provides the story of installing The GIMP, appropriately titled It’s hopeless. He is so right. Particularly, mirrors. It’s hard to describe the stare I give my computer screen when I get asked to choose a mirror. You’re a computer. You’re supposed to do this lame shit for me. How hard is it to get that? And then a screenshot of truly stunning UI design. The entire dialog is completely absurd, but the level of absurdity, how far they take it, it’s an absolute slam dunk. Linux never fails to impress me – just in the opposite way to, you know, the good way.

Have you seen the NYT’s sexy new website? Join me there now for a review of Motorola’s Q: Lovely Phone; Ugly Software. I hate to spoil it, but basically he admires the hardware and disses the Hell out of the software. Guess who made that software? It’s one of those things I find incredible. “Well, our last Microsoft software was pretty expensive, and completely sucked shit, so… I think we’ll go with them again. Yeap.” You munters.

It’s important to express yourself as a nation. So, when a new mall opens, it is only appropriate that Auckland shoppers cause motorway chaos. Regular readers may remember last year’s iBook stampede (much more impressive, as us Kiwis don’t do consumerism nearly as well as the US or UK). On this occasion, the Auckland motorway network was gridlocked because there were Bargains. I saw the coverage on the news, shots of people just carrying boxed TVs around. It was like watching ants, or as the commentator called it, “sheeple.” And it was horrible.

Did you hear al-Zarqawi got the Bomb? Bush says Zarqawi death may ‘turn the tide’ towards “… a more peaceful world for our children and grandchildren.” I hate to be an apologist for al-Zarqawi, I’m reasonably sure I would not like him much if I had met him, but I just find it so distasteful when people rejoice in killing. Yay! The world is now a better place! 18 Wheels of Justice, motherfucker!

And good news, all: Petrol price relief on horizon. That’s news to me, I thought – where’s it coming from? Sources in the oil industry? Major players in the Middle East? Well, no – it’s even better than that: turns out our Reserve Bank governer is omniscient.

Motorists can expect some relief from high petrol prices, with the Reserve Bank predicting a drop of 13 cents a litre by early next year.
…
The bank’s policy statement said “petrol prices are assumed to have reached a peak and are projected to fall to around $1.58 a litre by early 2007″.
…
Asked why he forecast oil prices would fall, Dr Bollard said it was because they were so high and “what goes up comes down”.

Seriously, that was the whole paragraph. Maybe we should also ask Paris Hilton for her input?

I’m currently pondering whether to watch the opening match of the Soccer World Cup, which kicks off in a couple hours at 4am NZST. I expect the temperature then will be about fucking freezing degrees Celsius. And I mean, 4am. But it seems it’ll be one of the few played live, instead of in easily-consumed and utterly meaningless highlights packages. Check out ONE Sport’s World Cup TV Schedule. On their incredibly shitty website. (Here is the alternative.) Seriously. How freakin’ hard?

Except they can’t even find the spacebar, let alone spell. What are they trying to be, Linux? If you’re going to copy, you have to copy the idea, not the end product, otherwise more likely than not your seams will be showing. (This is actually a fascinating topic – see this post on Cargo Cults, for example.)

Yes, I would like some ducting.

I should say, though, that I have heard only good things about the screen itself. Affordable, too. So that’s all good. If only they knew their limits.

I always wondered what those funny quote things meant. Nothing, I guess.

Since we are talking about screens, you should check out this screen-related post, if only for the wicked music. Oh yeah, and another video in the cruel humour series. (After man falls off bike, etc.) When I post links on my blog there is often a particular reader who I think it will really appeal to. On this occasion, I thought of Dave.

While I’m here, let me relate another wonderful story of Auckland driving. So I’m coming up to an intersection. The lights are green, and have been for some time, and I’m not talking about some green arrow shit here, we’re talking full green circle. It’s raining. Auckland probably does rain better than any city in the world. It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s dark, it’s windy, and every time it begins to ease – just enough that you turn down your wipers, and think yay, it’s over – it picks up again. As I approach the intersection I see someone from the transverse street doing likewise. I slow down a bit. Shouldn’t they be stopping? Maybe they’re turning left or something.

Ok, so they’re not turning left. They’re going freakin’ straight ahead. In a manner that will place their passenger door in the same time and place as my engine very soon. It is at this point that the guy sitting in their passenger seat starts looking at me. I try to brake, but also try not to spin out of control in the wet weather. And I’m thinking surely, they’re going to stop. They’re not going to stop. I brake again. They swerve a bit and keep charging ahead, quickly enough that they get past before I reach them. The guy in the passenger seat is still staring at me, presumably too terrified to move. It’s good times being the passenger in crazy car.

As the driver goes past he angrily toots his horn at me. All of this time, my light has been green. Great people, Aucklanders.

Prepare your eyesockets! This is fantastic.

Telecon [YouTube] (Removed at the request of copyright owner Telecom because its content was used without permission)
The spoofed Telecom commercial [The Techsploder] (New link, thanks to Pete’s comment.)

The only thing as good as that is videos of people crashing. So yeah, ever seen a bendy bus go out of control in a tunnel? Sick man, sick. Or even better is when it happens to some arrogant tosser. Like this guy. Anyway, if you’re looking for video, don’t make the same mistake I did.

Also on tonight’s playlist is the new Apple store. It is totally awesome. I was there. Yeah, it doesn’t really look like me aye? It’s funny how sometimes photos are like that. But see how I’m trying to look really serious and interested in what sexy blonde girl has to say, but instead I just look constipated. Man, even in an Apple store, it’s hard to pick up chicks.

I have been keeping a list of these for ages, I suppose in the theory that “one day I will have heaps of time to post but won’t be able to think of anything.” I’m awesome at coming up with stupid crap like that. Fortunately, they also come in handy when I have very little time to post. Like now. Ladies and gentlemen: Best Search Strings, Q2 2005. (See how many you can match up to the respective posts!)

• hahahalol
• pc system mack your pc all running and no error
• “what does your toilet say about you?”
• britneyspearsnaked (lots and lots of these – and more now, I guess)
• i want to make windows xp look like a mack
• MADAGASCAR HOOKERS
• “should i learn japanese” business
• capitalist scum
• black fashion police
• Xtrasite:db.rambleschmack.net mathamagic reviews (I wouldn’t really call it a review)
• Jim Schmackers family
• mack and daves